Free Blowout by Byron L. Dorgan Page B

eyes.
    â€œIt’s set,” she said breathlessly. In the overhead lights atop the building her face was shiny with sweat. She pushed up a sleeve of her white coveralls to look at her watch. “The first charge goes in thirteen, and the last eight minutes later.”
    â€œWhere’s Brenda?”
    â€œShe was setting the last plastique under the preheater,” Ada said. She spoke into her lapel mike. “Brenda, where the hell are you? We’re waiting.”
    There was no answer but all of them could hear the high-pitched sound in their earbuds like an electrical motor or something running. Someone’s voice-operated transmit relay was being triggered by the noise.
    â€œAckerman, get your ass out of there. We’re running out of time!” Ada shouted, and she looked fearfully at Barry.
    â€œMoose, copy?” he radioed.
    But there was no answer.
    â€œSomething’s gone wrong,” Ada told him. She started back to the door, but Barry grabbed her.
    â€œIt’s too late!” he shouted. “Someone else got to them. The guy we missed at the double-wide. We’re outa here now.”
    â€œWe can’t leave her, goddamnit. If they take her alive she’ll talk.”
    â€œThey won’t take her alive, and you know it,” Barry said. He’d planned for this contingency. In fact he’d expected it. The only one he couldn’t leave behind was Dr. Kemal. He was coming out dead or alive. Just the presence of his dead body would be enough to tip off the Initiative people—especially Whitney Lipton—what the real mission had been tonight.
    â€œFuck you, I’m going after her!” Ada screamed.
    She pulled away and started for the door, when Barry fired two shots, both of them hitting her high in the back, and she went down hard, her head bouncing off the gravel, her body skidding a few feet under her momentum.
    Dr. Kemal stepped back a pace.
    â€œStart one of the machines, you’re coming with me,” Barry ordered, and he went to where Ada lay facedown and put a round point-blank into the back of her head. “It’s a tough old world,” he muttered.
    Dr. Kemal started one of the ATVs and he stood flat-footed like a deer caught in headlights on a country highway.
    â€œMoose, Brenda, copy?” Barry radioed, but there was no answer. They were down. He went back to the ATV and climbed aboard, motioning for Dr. Kemal to ride pillion, the same as he had with Moose.
    Gordy had been monitoring all the radio traffic. “One, base. Trouble?” he radioed.
    â€œNothing we can’t handle,” Barry said, hitting the throttle and pulling away, Dr. Kemal clutching at him. “Are we still clear?”
    â€œRoger. Plus forty, five-zero remaining. What about Moose and Brenda?”
    It came to Barry that the son of a bitch kid was a sentimentalist after all his bullshit talk about technology being the only real form of truth and honesty. “Computers don’t lie to you, man,” he’d said once. “If they fuck up it’s always your fault. Garbage in, garbage out.”
    â€œThey’re down,” Barry radioed. “So is Ada.”
    â€œShit, oh, shit.”
    â€œStand by to move out. We’re incoming.”
    â€œYou can’t leave them.”
    â€œBase, one!” Barry shouted. “You copy my orders? We’re incoming, get prepped to move out.”
    He angled to the west, keeping the bulk of the generator station between him and the south and west exits. It would take some time for anyone to respond to the emergency because no signals were getting out of the station. Except for the one guy they had missed and presumably the newspaper reporter. But in a few minutes they were going to have their hands full when the Semtex the girls had planted started popping off.
    Fire in the hole, indeed, he thought, and he began braying like a madman.

 
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    BILLINGS COUNTY SHERIFF Nathan